Ah, when Christmastime was beer

My tastes in beer are constantly evolving, and over the last few years I've come increasingly to prefer crisp pilsners and IPAs. As I returned to past Christmastide favorites this year, I found I am no longer as enamored of the seasonal offerings as I once was. I am put off by the accent on malts, but continue to appreciate those which balance them with plentiful hops. Notable for satisfyingly hoppy finishes, I still enjoy Full Sail's Wassail and Breckinridge's Christmas Ale. Sadly, my increasing finickiness means no new Christmas favorites this year.

But do not despair, dear reader and fellow drinker. As we all know, Christmas is just the beginning of what can be a cold, cold winter (plenty of ice and snow), and the winter warmers have a certain charm. I recently sampled a bottle of Pyramid's Snow Cap Ale which made favorable impression. However, my favorite since the recent solstice has been New Belgium's Accumulation, a white IPA. As every curmudgeon can attest, sometimes bitterness, by way of copious IBUs, is all that can warm a cold, cold heart.

A surprisingly merry Christmas album

I don't ask for much from popular culture: just one marvelous Christmas album every year to add to my personal canon of seasonal cheer for the ages. Sadly, this season was looking about as dry as the last few, which led me to take a chance on Erasure.

Yes, Erasure.

If you, like me, came of age in the 80s, you will be familiar with at least a few of their earlier songs. (If I'm not mistaken, a copy of Upstairs at Eric's, the second album by Vince Clark's previous project, Yaz, was issued to every suburban teenager of my generation, along with a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor high-tops.) As with nearly all Christmas albums, Snow Globe is a mix of originals and classics, but all are delivered here with an admirable lack of cynicism. (If only the same could have been said for She & Him's disappointing venture into the genre.) This late into their career, I'm cheered to see Erasure are still as sincere as ever. For me, the stand-outs on the album are "Midnight Clear" and "Bleak Midwinter," although the latter choice may simply reflect the fact that "In the Bleak Midwinter" is one of my all-time favorite Advent hymns. Electro-pop might not be everyone's idea of Christmas music, but those so inclined will find a great deal to enjoy here.

For the rest of you, I recommend saving your shekels and getting over to the Noisetrade site (although you will be asked to leave "tips"). In my opinion, its standout offerings this year are Beta Radio's The Songs the Season Brings (especially "The Carol of the Banjos") and the Rosebuds' Christmas Tree Island.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good Christmas album!

Cake & the First Amendment

The great state of Colorado has become the latest battleground in the culture wars, as a court has ordered a Christian baker to prepare wedding cakes for homosexual couples despite his religiously-formed conscientious objection to so doing. On the one hand, this ruling is a fairly clear violation of said baker's First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and free exercise of religion. On the other, this ruling is in line with a legal tradition going back to the federal 1964 civil rights act. If the state can require a segregationist to serve Negroes at his lunch counter, it would follow the state can also require a Christian to bake wedding cakes for homosexuals. 

I greatly admire the efforts of the Freedom Riders in the 1950s and 60s, but in the interest of constitutional order, I can't affirm forcing people to serve people they don't want to serve, no matter how objectionable I find the choice. I don't have the Malcolm X quote at hand, but I recall him asking something like "Why would you want to eat food prepared by someone who hates you?" I believe the moral power of the lunch counter sit-ins was in shaming segregation before the nation's eyes, and that was powerful enough. Perhaps homosexuals should see whether the same tactic would work for their cause.

As a nation, we have to make a choice (actually, the choice has already been made) between individual rights and desired social outcomes. That fact was made abundantly clear by a recent Denver Post editorial which tried to deny the reality of such a choice. To quote,

...the gay couple's order never got to the stage of discussing what would be on the cake. At that point a baker's "free speech right to refuse" might kick in, depending on the nature of the request.

Instead, Phillips announced preemptively that "I just don't make cakes for same-sex weddings." He refused to bake a wedding cake for the couple "regardless of what was written on it or what it looked like," the judge said.

In a strained and vain attempt to retain freedom of speech (but with a notable lack of interest in religious liberty), the Post argues one might lawfully object to the words or decorations on the cake, but not the cake itself, even though the cake itself is symbolic action and the courts have always recognized that symbolic action is the equivalent of speech. In other words, the Post makes a distinction between forms of speech without establishing a real difference; said distinction will prove of cold comfort to those not in line with the new order.

Regarding the clergy housing allowance tax exemption

I took Thanksgiving week off this year, and since Mrs. Curmudgeon and I spent the weekend preceding one of our best, if most-neglected, national holidays by going off the grid, I missed the news that a federal judge in Wisconsin had ruled the clergy housing allowance tax exemption unconstitutional. I learned of this upon our return to the webernet-saturated world when my plains-dwelling, stout beer-drinking, Star Trek-obsessed pastor friend asked my opinion. (Yes, it takes at least a few weeks after a week away to clear out my virtual in-box.)

The Religion News Service article I linked to above is better than most I've read on the subject as it gives the historical context of the tax exemption and, via a quote from Russell Moore, explains the implications of the ruling should it stand through the appeals process. The amount of income clergy spend on housing is exempt from taxation in order to put said clergy on an equal footing with their brethren who receive housing in the form of a parsonage (or manse). If that income becomes taxable, then Churches will have to pay their pastors more in order for their pastors to take on the added tax burden. Despite popular media fixation with wealthy clergy in suburban mega-churches, most congregations in this country are quite small, and many might struggle to swing even an extra thousand dollars in salary. (The presbytery in which I serve includes several rural congregations in the Dakotas, so I speak from experience and do not exaggerate when I write this.) 

Should the ruling stand, it seems to me, as a simple matter of logical and legal reasoning, inevitable that pastors who live in parsonages would also be taxed on the rental value of their residences as the functional equivalent of paid income. In other words, this ruling could affect every pastor and every congregation in these United States.

The substantive legal issue, in my opinion, is the relationship of clergy to the state in their capacity as private citizens. As tax law evidences, this is not easy to disentangle. Pastors receive several tax exemptions, benefits, and burdens that secular persons do, but the housing allowance exemption is available only to religious persons. For simplicity's sake, it would seem more reasonable under the First Amendment to treat the income of clergy as entirely tax-exempt: this would be more conducive to state non-interference in religious matters. For myself, however, I don't see that as a necessary conclusion. In fact, under the present constitutional regime, I can see good arguments for taxing the entirety of a pastor's income, as this would be treating him merely in the same manner as other private citizens.

It seems to me this ruling is of note less for what it says legally than for what it indicates about our broader culture. Since the Republic's founding, only cranks and misanthropes have had a problem with granting special privileges to religious institutions and persons. Only recently has that cultural consensus shifted. The First Amendment hasn't been repealed, but the day has now come when fewer and fewer of our citizens understand why it is that the state should make no law which might in any way impair the free exercise of religion.

The friendship that dare not speak its name

As I've written elsewhere, Advent is, at least for me, the hap-happiest time of the year. The lights go up, the Christmas songs start playing, and I find myself weeping like a schoolgirl while listening to the Lake Woebegon monologue. However, there is a melancholy undercurrent for me because of another theme which becomes ubiquitous this time of year.

I speak, of course, of the polar bear and penguin, who are seen sledding, skating, sharing a caffeinated corn syrup-based beverage, and just generally frolicking together on everything from advertisements to throw pillows this time of year. Their friendship is so open, so mutually supportive, and so freely and graciously given it puts me in mind of Isaiah 11:1-10, the text I preached the second Sunday in Advent. As the lion lies down with the lamb, so the polar bear with the penguin. It's nearly eschatological in its beauty.

Except that it can't happen because polar bears and penguins live, literally, at the opposite ends of the earth (polar bears on the North Pole ice cap and penguins around the South Pole on Antarctica and South America). Leave it to Coca-Cola to come up with ad campaign even less likely than persons of every race and ethnicity joining hands and singing in harmony whilst buying one another a caffeinated corn syrup-based carbonated beverage.

I guess it really is eschatological.

Jackie & Me (42)

Jackie & Me (playing at the Denver Center Theatre Company's Space Theatre through December 22), is an adaptation of the second novel in author Dan Gutman's series for children in which young Joey Stoshack has the power to visit baseball greats during times past by holding a baseball card. In this installment, Joey goes back in time to Jackie Robinson's rookie year with the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

According to the production notes, the adaptation of the first novel in the series was produced by a children's theatre company, and this play clearly is intended for a similar audience. As one might expect from the genre, Joey meets a baseball great, learns an important moral lesson, and goes back to his life a person changed for the better. The trope is tired and trite, but relatively harmless when applied to Honus Wagner. In this case, it has the unfortunate effect of turning Jackie Robinson into the magical negro who is significant because of the character development he inspires in the play's white protagonist. Once again, the narrative of persons of color is mediated through a white perspective. (As part of his time-traveling gift, Joey magically becomes African-American. Yes, it was painful and slightly embarrassing to watch a white actor pretend he was black.) Set alongside the premiere of Just Like Us, Jackie & Me makes one wonder whether the DCTC wouldn't do well to attend one of those consciousness-raising seminars to which major corporations subject their executives.

Once again, I question the DCTC's production choices. While this play makes for fine children's theatre, that's not what the DCTC is. What family can afford to take their children to a show which charges $50 a seat? (I suppose I can picture such a family, which, given the close relationship of race to class in this country, probably would need a white mediator in order to appreciate a facet of the black experience.) With the fine company and excellent resources available to it, the DCTC would be better advised to choose more challenging adult fare, even if it's not from a new or minor playwright. Please don't tell me there are too many professional productions of Shakespeare or Mamet these days.

A far more thoughtful examination of the same historical period is the recent film 42 (now available on DVD). It has the decency to treat Jackie Robinson with dignity, tracing his story from his own point of view and not from that of a white interpreter. It's not a great movie, but nonetheless a worthy sports film which capably sets Jackie Robinson's rookie year in its historical and cultural context. Thereby, it demonstrates his significance for both baseball and race relations in these United States.

While we're on the subject of history, Jackie & Me features a galling moment of ahistorical nonsense. Unfortunately, in order to discuss it, I may offend some of my readers, so feel free to quit your browser now. In one scene, Jackie Robinson shows Joey a stack of hate mail, which includes several death threats towards Robinson and his young family. However, they clearly feel the worst of these letters is one which calls Robinson a "nigger," a word which young Joey is barely able to make pass his lips. (This is its sole pronunciation in the play.)

Now, I happen to have a black daughter, and that's not a word I want directed at her or any other person of color. However, "nigger" has taken on its greatest power to offend only in the last decade or so. In Jackie Robinson's time, it was an unwelcome epithet, but hardly taboo or unexpected. To import today's delicate sensibilities to an earlier era is not only silly, it destroys the ability of the past to speak clearly to the present.

Here's what I mean by that: when one reads The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, one is shocked by many of the characters' racism precisely because it is commonplace, unremarkable, and, to the characters themselves, entirely invisible. A plain presentation of the past allows us to see just how alien its environment is to us. That, in turn, prompts us to reflect on the differences between our time and theirs, and perhaps even encourages us to question what atrocities are invisible to us in our day. (In all seriousness, what do you think future generations will think of the thousands of abortions perpetrated in this country each year?)

I took Thing 1, now aged 10, to this production, and he seemed unfazed by the dramatic unveiling of "the 'N' word." Believe it or not, there were warnings posted in the lobby, but he was able to accept the moment as just another element in the torrent of abuse which Jackie Robinson in particular, and all black people of his day in general, faced on a daily basis. I think my son would have been better served by an unvarnished and unsantized presentation of the full ugliness of the racism his sister's people faced in this great country not too long ago. It's a reality with which all my children will have to contend, as all our nation's people still do.

Happy holidays!

I occasionally use Mrs. Curmudgeon's Facebook account to spy on congregants and others, and was not too surprised at the beginning of December to see several posts announcing a stand against the greeting "Happy holidays!" in order to wage a counter-offensive in the alleged war on Christmas. However, I was also pleased to see this decision tree also making its rounds on The Facebook:

That really says it all, but since I'm a pastor and saying more than is absolutely necessary is an occupational hazard, I will venture a few more observations on the issue.

First, let us observe that, since "X" has always been an abbreviation for the Greek word "Xristos," translated as "Christ" in English, those who use "Xmas" are not taking Christ out of Christmas, but are doing the best they can under space constraints. Relax.

Second, "Happy holidays" is a relatively polite greeting in a pluralistic society in which various faith communities celebrate different holy days during this time of year. Last time I checked, Jesus allows Christians to behave relatively politely.

Furthermore, even if ours was not a relatively pluralistic society but were instead monolithically and universally Christian, the Church calendar is just packed with holidays. Not only do we have the entire season of Advent, but there's Christmas Day, the twelve days of Christmastide, and Epiphany, on top of which many also mark the New Year with worship services. Of all people, Christians have the most reason to wish each other "Happy holidays!"

My middle sister, whose taste in popular music is almost as impeccable as mine, a few years ago gifted the family with a Christmas playlist which concluded with Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters singing a song called "Happy Holidays." Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. If that's not the apogee of American Christian civil religion, I don't know what is.

Now that we've got that settled, let's get down to putting the X back in X-Mas!

Thanksgiving Day: The long-expected turkey

I checked the turkey's internal temperature for the first time at 1 p.m., at just under 5 hours from the beginning of the grilling process. My meat thermometer recorded 176 degrees (fahrenheit, of course;  it's not October and this isn't Canada), which confirms my belief that the weather is the controlling factor in grilling time. Since a turkey is considered cooked at 160 degrees, I guesstimate this 21-pound bird was done in about four and a half hours. Remarkable: that competes with a standard oven.

As Thanksgiving dinner was scheduled for 3 p.m., I lowered the heat in my Weber grill by reducing air flow to almost nothing. After a shower, I wrapped the roasting pan and bird in heavy-duty aluminum foil and towels for transportation to the off-site meal location. This kept the turkey sufficiently warm for serving when the dinner itself commenced.

As per usual, I was pleased by the striking visual effect of the turkey skin's mahogany hue, the result of sitting in smoke. (As I don't eat the skin, I can't say how the brine and smoke affects the taste.) The turkey retained moisture very well: juices ran off the serving/carving platter and stained the tablecloth. I did not notice any particular sweetness in the meat, despite the extra sugar and wine in the brine. I increasingly suspect the best way to add flavors to a turkey is through post-brine, pre-grilling preparations such as onions or fruits in the cavity or herbs inserted below the skin. The smoke notes this year were very subtle; this may be due to using branches which were still relatively green.

All done with the mildly obsessive chronicle. I promise.

Thanksgiving Day: the waiting is the hardest part

A few years ago, I was briefly enamored with a grilling device which promised perfectly smoked meats. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was basically a convection oven which used charcoal as its heat source, and its "grilling" process involved little more than inserting the food and then leaving said food alone until done. I immediately lost interest, as the entire purpose of grilling is to fiddle with the foods, constantly adjusting heat, position of foodstuffs on the grate, finding the magic point when perfect char has been obtained but just before burning occurs, so on and so forth.

Accordingly, the most trying time for me on Thanksgiving Day comes after wrapping the turkey in foil and adding hardwood. Lifting the lid will only cause heat and smoke to escape, and perhaps lead to an underdone bird. I must wait patiently for three hours, keeping my hands and barbecue tools to myself.

I've learned to occupy myself with hanging Christmas lights from the roof and a bottle or two of Sam Adams Octoberfest (I carefully reserve a six-pack or so for Thanksgiving; this tradition dates back to when I was buying beer past its sell-by dates at a local distributor's dock sale, said business now sadly closed). Not much of a sop to my obsessive tendencies, but it's the best I can do.